


Good Night

by hongbab



Category: VIXX
Genre: Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 19:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13577649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hongbab/pseuds/hongbab
Summary: Once you have nothing to worry about though, hope becomes an illusion, a drug that drags you into an alternate reality you can’t quit and it stays until your thoughts waste away and render you unable to move forward.





	Good Night

**Author's Note:**

> based on [this](http://hongbab.tumblr.com/post/163608751136/hi-is-the-prompt-closed-i-just-wonder-if-you-can) request and [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NMqp8qq_gg&t=143s) video (the video might be unavailable in some regions; it's unavailable for me on my laptop, but works perfectly on my phone which is set to a different language and region)
> 
> recommended song: VIXX LR - [Poison](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcJpjm4T8fY) (if you ignore the lines about the ‘scent’ of that special someone they’re singing/rapping about, even the lyrics fit!)
> 
>  
> 
> this fic is really sad and is all about death, so please, if you feel uncomfortable reading about it, proceed with caution!
> 
>  
> 
> i feel like i have to make it clear that i absolutely did _not_ enjoy writing about this topic and that it was extremely hard for me to write such a heavy story. please don't think i'm a monster;;

The blindingly white walls feel like they are closing in on him, as if they are moving towards him inch by inch, suffocating Taekwoon way too slowly, waiting for his oxygen level to decrease enough for his heart to finally find it useless to pump his blood into the rest of his body.

He forgot to breathe.

He takes a small, shuddery breath that feels like a knife in his chest, the sound of his inhalation hurting his ears. A tear slides down his face, hot and wet, running over the same path the previous drops travelled along: down his cheek, dampening the corner of his mouth and arriving to his chin from where it falls on his icy hands in his lap. 

The corridor is so long and so quiet and the floor he’s sitting on is so cold.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting here—it may have been hours, but he can only guess. Time has stopped a while ago and his phone isn’t buzzing in his pocket anymore the way it had: vibrating several times for several long minutes, until it ultimately ceased to bother him. It’s still dark outside—a sharp contrast to the sterile lights of the hospital building. Taekwoon doesn’t think the sun will ever come up again. It has no reason to.

He should probably go back and face… the consequence of all this. He should man up and take the lead, offer support to those who now depend on him as if he is their oldest brother, to hold their hands and console them, show them how to proceed from here. Because there must be a way to move on, there must be a next step, even if it feels like he’s reached the edge of the world and can’t go back and the only way to quit this static moment would be to disappear into the bottomless abyss that is only waiting for him to stumble. He’s not ready to take that step yet and he’s not ready to imagine a different world where there is a path ahead.

The foul, cruel, ineradicable sliver of hope that nestled into his mind after he’d got the tragic phone call is still there and he can’t find it in himself to fight it. He can’t chase it away, even though it’s useless now.

Hope is a strange thing. They say hope is positive, that it can make miracles happen if one treasures it enough, but nobody talks about what comes together with it: worry. Worry about the what ifs, about the opposite of those miracles that no one wants to really think about. Once you have nothing to worry about though, hope becomes an illusion, a drug that drags you into an alternate reality you can’t quit and it stays until your thoughts waste away and render you unable to move forward.

Worry is what keeps hope pure and healthy and Taekwoon has nothing to be worried about anymore.

  
  


Jaehwan bought himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t really need it: he couldn’t feel anything, exhaustion included. He’s been awake for 20-22 hours, but he doesn’t know if he’s sleepy. It doesn’t even matter.

Apart from not needing caffeine at the moment, he didn’t even _want_ to buy the coffee. It wasn’t a conscious action: it was automatic like wetting your lips with your tongue when they feel dry. One moment he was standing by the four chairs his friends had occupied in the waiting room and in the next, he was feeding some bills to the vending machine in a different area. The only thing that broke his reverie was a kind voice when a nurse asked him, “Do you need help?”. Jaehwan blinked then, looking from the nurse to the buttons of the machine and then down at the white Styrofoam cup in his hand.

“No,” he said simply, not trusting his voice enough to say anything more.

There was only one thing, one person he needed, but he couldn’t run to that person for a hug.

When he got back to the chairs, one of them was already empty. His legs felt weak enough that he didn’t want to stay standing anymore, so he sat down slowly, as if he was in a daze. He felt drugged. He still does.

“Jaehwan,” Wonshik rasped, his voice grating on Jaehwan's nerves like the sound of the burr on a blade when you try to sharpen a crappy knife. Wonshik then took the cup from Jaehwan and pulled a crumpled tissue out of his pocket, wiping the coffee drops off the Styrofoam before doing the same to Jaehwan's shaky hands. “You’ll burn yourself,” Wonshik murmured and lifted the cup to his mouth, drinking just enough that when he handed it back to Jaehwan, the coffee wouldn’t spill as Jaehwan held it again.

Jaehwan looked into Wonshik's sad, bloodshot eyes that seemed to droop more than usual. The sight was like cold water poured over his head: sobering and painful, and Jaehwan couldn’t bear to keep the eye contact. He glanced down at the coffee in his hand and has been staring at it ever since.

The reflection of his face is blurred from the ripples on the surface of his drink as his hands shake more and more wildly, a tear unexpectedly dropping into the beverage.

He feels a smile form on his lips as he thinks: now this is a salted caramel latte. 

His smile fades away as fast as it appeared when he imagines how Hakyeon would laugh at that stupid, stupid joke, his voice ringing through the place so loudly they would probably get scolded for it.

Jaehwan drops the cup as he starts crying in earnest.

  
  


Wonshik is wearing a pair of white sneakers. He bought them a couple of days ago, had been looking forward to get them from the new collection for months and now the right one is soaked in sticky, brown coffee. He could probably save his shoe if he wiped the coffee off immediately, but his body feels like it’s made from rusty metal. It won’t move.

Jaehwan's shoulder is bumping against him with every shudder as he cries. He should hug him, pull him close and soothe his pain by just being there, but Wonshik isn’t really there. His mind has been in a room full of monitors and cables and tubes and under them, a lifeless body for the last few hours. It’s been doing what his body still can’t: mourning his biggest support in life, keeping vigil while his best friend slept.

Taekwoon should be here. Not because he thinks Taekwoon should be the responsible one now, the solid rock they can lean on, but because Wonshik is seconds away from completely falling apart now that two people are missing from their group. One of them can’t return and Taekwoon… Wonshik just wants all of them to be physically close to him, so that he knows they’re still there. So that he can feel like he can protect them if something happens.

He wasn’t there to protect Hakyeon. The guilt fills his throat like bile, makes him swallow back the urge to vomit.

Wonshik has always liked playing the hero. Some might call him a control freak who wants to keep his loved ones on leashes, never letting them drift away enough for Wonshik to be unable to reach them one way or another, but that isn’t how he feels. He never once forbade those precious to him to live their individual lives and he never voiced how anxious he felt about his friends or family not being in his vicinity when they left the house without him, even though he was always concerned and sometimes even felt sick to his stomach. The pang was there in his chest even when Hakyeon said, “I’ll be right back,” earlier tonight.

Wonshik has failed. No matter how hard he tried to keep everyone safe, they ended up sitting in a hospital, first waiting and now… now they were only trying to come to terms with what happened.

He doesn’t deserve being able to cry.

  
  


Hongbin hates crying. Actually, he hates most forms of emotional expression, especially if they’re done loudly.

And yet here he is, unable to hold himself back.

He stands up from his seat with wobbly legs, the tears in his eyes making it hard to see his surroundings. He shuffles towards the corridor the doctors told them not to follow them to and he can feel Wonshik's gaze on his back, but he doesn’t care. He knows Wonshik is too numb to follow him and drag him back right now, but even if he tried, Hongbin would tear himself out of his grip, shake him off and keep stumbling forward.

There is no one on the corridor and he falters after a few steps when he sees how empty it is, compared to the crowded waiting room. His shoulder hits the wall as his strength seeps out of him and he leans against it with his back, finding himself sitting on the floor after a moment. He hugs his knees to his chest and buries his face in his arms, muffling his sobs.

Hakyeon is his everything. Was. He still is. He was there every time the whole world came crushing down around Hongbin, if not physically, then he was there on the phone with him, in their private chatroom, or, simply, in Hongbin's head, murmuring words of comfort and listing all the good things about Hongbin. He never believed Hakyeon, never accepted his praising words, but they felt like balm on his wounds, like a charm that—if he repeated those words in his head on and on—could help him stand up and go on. 

Hakyeon is not doing that now. He’s lying on bloody bedsheets now with his eyes closed and he is not talking, he is not holding Hongbin's head to his chest and not caressing his hair and not trying to soothe him. He is letting Hongbin down. He has left him like one would leave an unwanted child in the church porch, hoping someone will find him before he freezes to death.

He hates Hakyeon. He wants to tell Hakyeon he hates him and he wants Hakyeon to listen, to tease him about it, to realize Hongbin is just being dramatic and lying to him. He wants to go and find Taekwoon, wherever he might fucking be right now, and tell him to wake Hakyeon so Hongbin can yell at him.

He wants Hakyeon to come back for him and lift him up from the floor, telling him it’s too cold and dirty.

Hakyeon won’t come, no matter how much Hongbin wants him to.

  
  


The light of the lamps paints Sanghyuk's entire vision orange as he closes his eyes. It looks much like the rays of the setting sun on a cloudless sky as the brightest star ascends, disappearing under the horizon and bringing on the darkness of the night.

He wonders if Hakyeon could see it, too, when they brought him into the building on a stretcher. He probably could, only his brain didn’t process the sight.

Sanghyuk doesn’t cry easily. He wishes he could weep quietly like Wonshik or let the sadness flow out of him the way it does from Jaehwan's eyes, instead of sitting here like a statue. Maybe he is just in a shock and the crying will come later, when he is lying in his bed wide awake, staring at the ceiling but seeing nothing in the dark.

He sat through the excruciatingly long ride to the hospital silently, listening to Taekwoon's sniffling in the driver’s seat as he tried his best not to break down before they could reach the building. He also heard Hongbin chanting “please” softly, huddled up on the seat behind Taekwoon as he was. Wonshik kept gasping in front of him like he was trying not to drown in a massive body of water, but Jaehwan in the middle was just as mute as Sanghyuk himself. He only held Sanghyuk's hand tightly.

Taekwoon disappeared as soon as a doctor emerged from the operating room, almost whispering to them, “I am so sorry, we couldn’t help”. He didn’t even wait for an explanation, for the doctor to elaborate, to tell them the reasons: brain damage, collapsed lungs, too much blood. Sanghyuk listened obediently and made no effort to acknowledge Wonshik's sharp exhale, Hongbin's long-suppressed sounds finally bursting out of him, or when Jaehwan stood up without a word, only to return with a cup of coffee he didn’t seem to understand why he bought.

It would be easier to think of it in a scientific way: a road accident went wrong, a patient whose body gave up fighting. Brain damage, collapsed lungs, too much blood.

But Hakyeon isn’t just a medical case to Sanghyuk. Hakyeon has been beside him for so many years, watching him turn from a child into an adult, supporting him, helping him grow up. Sanghyuk doesn’t feel like a grown-up yet and Hakyeon isn’t here anymore to show him how to be an adult, a good person. Like Hakyeon himself.

He shuts his eyes even more tightly and the orange sunset disappears, turning everything into black.

He wishes he could have said goodnight to Hakyeon.

  
  


When Hakyeon imagined how he would die, he always thought it would be over in a second. He was wrong.

He couldn’t feel much, not after the impact, after the sudden pain in his head, but he could still see the road, the blood spreading on the asphalt—his blood. His thoughts felt like molten lead, flowing around in his mind, making less sense with every breath he took. It hurt to breathe.

When he finally closed his eyes, a blurry image managed to break to the surface. It was of five people: his best friends, sitting in a circle and laughing, laughing about a joke Hakyeon had told them, their laughter filling him with warmth despite how cold he was. 

It was a memory, it had to be a memory. It had to be true.

Hakyeon could finally fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to talk to me about any of my stories or just vixx in general on [tumblr](http://hongbab.tumblr.com/), [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/hongbab) or [aff](http://www.asianfanfics.com/profile/view/1061753) ♡ please support me on [ko-fi.com](https://ko-fi.com/hongbab) if you can ♡


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